Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

The races for seats in America's Senate will be just as pitched as the presidential contest.

That's especially true in Alabama, which two years ago elected Doug Jones, the first Democratic

Senator in a quarter of a century. Our correspondent, Paisema Visit, says that his moderate ways hold

a lesson for other Democrats. And air pollution levels in Delhi at last seem to be dropping.

The thick smog was declared a public health emergency earlier this month. It's clear that

poor air quality can shorten lives, but the danger is particularly acute for kids.

It's up though.

In the early days of the Internet, a philosophy grew up that it should be free, open, and democratic.

I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies

you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us. Nor do you possess any

methods of enforcement. We have true reason to fear.

That was John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which from 1990

called for civil liberties in the digital world, for the nascent Internet to be borderless

and unregulated. He was one of what came to be known as techno libertarians. Their ideas

gained considerable traction.

Then President Bill Clinton was speaking at Johns Hopkins University in 2000.

Now, there's no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet. Good luck.

That's sort of like trying to nail gelo to the wall.

Then social media happened, and with that came optimism about the possibilities of a connected

world. But now worries have mounted about how Facebook has changed and even distorted society

...